‘Don’t, Marc!’
He put his thumb under her chin and tilted her face, scanning it with smouldering brown eyes.
‘I thought you wanted me,’ he murmured hoarsely.
She was too far gone for anything but complete honesty.
‘I did…I do. But——’
She broke off and a hot flush of shame burned in her cheeks.
‘But you’re a nice girl who doesn’t play games with men she hardly knows,’ he finished for her.
Games? Was that all it had meant to him, that kiss which had inflamed her, igniting all kinds of unfamiliar passions within her?
‘That’s right,’ she said coldly and wrenched away from him.
He caught her by the arm.
‘Did you know that you have the most enchanting green eyes I have ever seen?’ he asked.
‘Oh, really? Is that why you kissed me? Because of my enchanting green eyes?’
‘Exactly,’ he agreed in an amused voice.
Darting a swift, angry glance at him she saw that he could not possibly have been as stirred by that encounter as she had been. Oh, he was aroused by her, she did not doubt that. The narrowing of his eyes, the tension in his muscles, the hard, hot, ruthless pressure of his body had told her that. But his feelings were not involved. The smug, nonchalant self-possession with which Marc Le Rossignol confronted the world was quite untouched. A feeling of vengeful rage rose in Jane’s throat, threatening to choke her. She wanted to hit out, hurt him, make him vulnerable the way lesser human beings were.
‘I hate you,’ she breathed. ‘I wish you’d never come here.’
‘So, what are you going to do about it?’ he taunted.
CHAPTER THREE
‘I’LL do anything I can to make you leave,’ vowed Jane.
‘Does that include dirty tricks?’ demanded Marc with a lift of his eyebrows.
‘I said anything!’ she retorted.
Then, giving him another long, burning look over her shoulder, she crossed the room to the French doors. Marc reached her just as she gripped the handle and whirled her around to face him.
‘Are you going out to eat worms again?’ he demanded mockingly. ‘I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you have lunch with me today?’
‘I’ve just had breakfast,’ she pointed out.
He shrugged, in no way perturbed by her obvious hostility.
‘I mean later in the day, naturally. It’s time we got to know each other.’
‘No, thanks.’
His mouth hardened.
‘Consider it an order,’ he said. ‘It’s part of your job to brief me on the vineyard. You can do it while we talk over lunch.’
Jane scowled, but Marc remained cool and unruffled by her annoyance, merely watching her with a faint, sardonic lift of his eyebrows.
‘All right,’ she agreed at last.
‘Is there anywhere special you’d like to go?’ asked Marc, flashing her a triumphant smile.
For a moment she was tempted to take him to a particularly unsavoury backstreet dive where she had once eaten the most revolting hamburger in her life with Brett. Forever afterwards she had called the place the Greasy Spoon, but childish tactics of that kind were only likely to irritate Marc without achieving anything.
‘We could go to Moorilla Winery,’ she suggested slowly. ‘That’s a family vineyard like the one I’m trying to establish here. It’s just outside of Hobart on the banks of the Derwent River and it has a very pleasant restaurant. You might like to try some of their wines.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ agreed Marc approvingly.
Shortly after one o’clock they drove up the Moorilla estate’s winding driveway which led out along a spit of land at Claremont. The autumn sun was still shining tranquilly, gilding the neat rows of green vines, sparkling off the blue waters of the river and warming the terracotta tiles at the entrance to the restaurant. Seeing the tables set invitingly on the balcony, Marc turned to Jane with a questioning look.
‘Why don’t we eat outside, seeing the weather is so fine?’ he suggested.
‘Just as you like,’ replied Jane. ‘But don’t expect the weather to stay like this for long, will you? It’s always very changeable here. We get gales, bushfires, cold weather, rain. There are lots of things that could ruin your grape harvest.’
Marc smiled lazily.
‘If I didn’t know better I’d say that you were trying to turn me off this place, but I’ve done my homework. I know that a lot of what you’re saying is true. Tasmaman summers are colder on average than those in France. I also know that some very fine wine is being made here at Moorilla and I intend to sample some of it right now. So why don’t you stop telling me atrocity stories and join me?’
The words were spoken pleasantly enough, but they were obviously more in the nature of a command than an invitation. Seething inwardly, Jane was forced to obey. Yet the ordeal was more pleasant than she had anticipated. Once the waiter had been informed of Marc’s interest and background he brought an array of wines on a tray for them to sample. In spite of her resentment towards Marc, Jane soon became absorbed in tasting, comparing and discussing. After they had tried three white wines and two reds, she belatedly realised that she was starving.
‘Don’t you want to eat?’ she demanded.
‘What would you suggest?’ asked Marc, picking up a menu.
‘I think you ought to try a mixed platter of local delicacies and perhaps have some seafood or steak to follow.’
Before long they were each supplied with a plate of smoked beef, baby quail, fresh oysters and other tempting hors-d’ oeuvres.
‘This food is excellent,’ exclaimed Marc with obvious surprise.
Jane felt a momentary pleasure which she sternly quelled. She had always been proud of the island where she lived and enjoyed introducing strangers to its fine food, but she didn’t want Marc to start liking the place too much. Nor did she intend to let down her guard enough to start liking him.
‘Well, Tasmanian food is good,’ she admitted in an offhand tone. ‘But I don’t think you’d like living here. It’s right at the end of the world, so far away from everything you’ve grown up with. You’d miss the buildings and the culture and the traditions of France.’
A faint smile flickered around the edges of Marc’s mouth.
‘I won’t need to miss them,’ he pointed out. ‘You seem to forget that my plan is to have the best of both worlds. Europe for tradition and cosmopolitan sophistication, this island for the great escape. Bordeaux for half the year, Tasmania for the rest. What could be better?’
‘You actually live in Bordeaux?’ asked Jane, her hostility momentarily forgotten.
‘Yes, have you been there?’
She nodded as she swallowed a chilled oyster.
‘Mmm. It’s a beautiful area.’
‘Very beautiful,’ agreed Marc in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘I can never decide when it’s most beautiful. In the summer with the vines lush and green and a heat-haze shimmering up from the earth. Or in autumn, when we have our harvest and the big parties to follow the picking. Or in springtime when there are hidden wildflowers out in the woods. Or even in the winter when the whole place is stark and cold with dormant vines like black brush strokes against the white snow.’
Jane gave him a troubled look, feeling unwillingly touched by the warmth in his voice as he spoke of his homeland. For a moment he sounded quite sensitive, as if he really cared about the place. Then she felt an immediate reaction of scorn. Marc Le Rossignol sensitive? Never! He was about as sensitive as a length of irrigation pipe. All the same, his mention of Bordeaux intrigued her. Hadn’t he said something earlier on about having a family vineyard there?
‘Didn’t you tell me that your family had been making wine there for five hundred years?’ she demanded.
‘Yes,’ agreed Marc.
Five hundred years! It gave her goose-bumps just to think of it.
‘How wonderful to have a family traditio
n like that! But what’s the vineyard like?’ she asked curiously. ‘What’s your family like? Tell me about it all.’
Marc shrugged.
‘The equipment is old and often rather shabby. So is the house, actually. Our home is just outside the village of St Sulpice. And let me tell you that if tradition is what you like then you’d be in ecstasies in Bordeaux. It seems to me that the hand of tradition lies heavy on everything we do there. Sometimes that’s marvellous. Everyone in the village knows you and you know them and there are little rituals about anything you do, even if it’s just pruning vines or drinking coffee in a pavement café. In some ways that’s good, but at other times I’ve felt as if tradition was like a weight, crushing me down.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ll give you an example,’ offered Marc, his eyes kindling as if he were going into battle. ‘Some of the grapes in our vineyard were old varieties which were hard to pick and were only ever used for making a very undistinguished vin ordinaire. That always annoyed me, so in the end I took matters into my own hands. I brought in earthmovers, razed the vines to the ground, used mustard gas to fumigate the earth. Then I planted new varieties. Mon Dieu! You should have heard the outcry. Anyone would have thought it was the villagers that I had gassed. Everyone was up in arms—my old friends, even my family—all abusing me and complaining about my violent destructive nature. I can still see my father in his shabby old overalls and cap with tears in his eyes as he told me how I had brought shame on all the family of Le Rossignol.’
Jane smiled at the image. Obviously Marc came from quite a humble background, in spite of his aristocratic manner. Somehow the realisation made her thaw a little towards him, particularly since there was an unmistakable note of affection beneath his annoyance as he spoke of his family. Her face shadowed as she thought of her own unreliable father and her distinctly unmaternal mother.
‘You’re very fond of your family, aren’t you?’ she asked with a touch of envy.
‘Of course I’m very fond of them,’ agreed Marc wearily. ‘But they’re like all families. I love them and they drive me mad. Every last one of them.’
Jane blinked.
‘How many of them are there?’ she asked.
‘Well, there’s my father—he’s retired but he still keeps a finger in the wine vat—and my mother, whose main interests in life are the kitchen, the garden and the grandchildren. Two younger brothers—Paul and Robert—both married, both proper traditional wine-makers, and a younger sister Laurette, who is a research chemist. You’d like Laurette; she’s lived in the United States and she’s open-minded, but even she has now become engaged to a traditional winemaker. And then there is me. The rebel, the troublemaker, the destroyer of ancient hallowed vines. “A good thing he went to Australia!” my dear relatives say to each other with a shudder of relief. “Perhaps our vineyards will be spared any further destruction!”’
Jane’s eyes twinkled in spite of herself.
‘Just as a matter of interest,’ she asked, ‘how did those new vines that you planted turn out?’
Marc grinned.
‘They did very well. We got three times the yield of the old vines and they were much easier to pick. That’s the biggest reason my family has never forgiven me.’
‘I suppose they’re still fond of you though, aren’t they?’ she said in a wistful voice.
‘Of course. But you say that in an odd tone. Perhaps you fear that your family is not fond of you?’
She was alarmed by his perception and felt herself shrinking like a sea anemone at the touch of a probing hand.
‘I haven’t much family,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘Only my father and my mother.’
‘A father who tries to sell the property behind your back,’ murmured Marc thoughtfully. ‘What about your mother? Is she still alive?’
Jane swallowed, dropped her eyes and drew a pattern on the rim of her wine glass with her finger.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘but she’s hardly what you’d call the motherly type.’
‘No brothers, no sisters?’ quizzed Marc.
‘No. My parents didn’t really hit if off. They got divorced when I was ten years old. Before that my mother had been an architect in Melbourne so after they split up she went off with a huge sigh of relief to resume her career.’
‘And you went with her, naturally?’
‘No,’ replied Jane. ‘She didn’t want me. Oh, she said it was because I loved the farm so much that she couldn’t bear to take me away from it, but I would have gone like a shot to be with her. The real reason was that she just plain didn’t want me. After the divorce I went to a boarding-school and spent most of my holidays with my father.’
Even now at twenty-seven she couldn’t quite keep the pain out of her voice. Why am I telling him this? she thought savagely. I’ve never mentioned it to anyone before. She was horrified when he suddenly reached out and gripped her free hand.
‘Pauvre petite,’ he murmured.
‘No,’ she said through her teeth. ‘I’m not a poor little thing! I’m tough and unscrupulous and you’d better not forget it.’
At that moment they were interrupted by the arrival of their main course. Throughout the rest of the meal Jane was conscious of Marc’s lazy scrutiny, and she found it hard to keep her mind on the conversation. All the time that they were talking about rainfall and grape varieties her thoughts kept drifting to the way he had kissed her that morning, and to that fragment of discussion about their respective families.
She wished she hadn’t told him all that sentimental guff about her mother, just as if she had been a pathetic Little Orphan Annie abandoned in a laundry basket on somebody’s doorstep! It sounded uncomfortably like self-pity and it also filled her with a superstitious fear that if Marc knew the nature of her deepest insecurities, it would give him power over her.
Jane liked people to think that she was tough and self-reliant and resourceful, not as soft as marshmallow. Of course the real truth was that she was a seething mass of contradictions. By nature she had always been trusting and impetuous, open about her feelings and with a quick temper, but the nagging fear that neither of her parents really loved her or wanted her had always been too private and secret to reveal to anyone until now. So why had she told Marc? Perhaps because he had an uncanny knack of getting under her skin and making her blurt out things she really didn’t want to say.
It was doubly annoying since he was so self-possessed and inscrutable himself. Weren’t Frenchmen supposed to be hot-blooded and passionate and volatile? Well, not this one! He had all the controlled power of a dormant volcano and only the occasional spurt of anger or desire gave any hint of the molten depths that might lurk beneath his tranquil exterior. She remembered his narrowed, smouldering eyes as he kissed her and a secret conviction rose inside her that in the right circumstances Marc Le Rossignol might blaze completely out of control. Suddenly she felt a tempestuous urge to provoke him, to make him lose his nonchalance and boil over with…with what? Passion, rage, jealousy? But how could she ever arouse such feelings in him? And why should she even want to?
She realised that Marc had stopped talking about vineyards and was applying himself to the serious business of sipping his wine and enjoying his beefsteak. His absorption gave Jane the opportunity to study him at her leisure. She looked again at his chiselled features, with the rugged jaw and twisted smile, and let her gaze travel down over his Pierre Cardin shirt to the brown, capable hands resting on the table. There was a strange intimacy about watching the dark hairs that straggled from beneath his Rolex watch, the long, tapered fingers that looked both strong and sensitive.
I wonder what he’d be like in bed? thought Jane, and then blushed hotly with shock and a furtive thrill of excitement at the unfamiliar sensual images that immediately filled her head. What was wrong with her? Never in her life had she sat looking at a man and imagining such appalling and delicious things. I’d like to unbutton his shirt slowly, she thought, and
slip my hands inside and feel that warm, hard muscular chest with the rough hair on it. Or even touch his nipples and tease them with my fingertips, and then let my fingers stray down to his belt…I’d unbuckle it and slip my hands inside and feel him grow hot and hard under my touch. Or…I know! I’d like to be in bed with him, both of us naked, and I’d cover him with fruit. Strawberries and whipped cream from the navel down and I’d nibble it and lick it off slowly, going lower and lower each time, until…She swallowed hard and closed her eyes for an instant with a faint sigh. Or I’d like to be in a rainforest with him. A warm, steamy jungly rainforest, with no mosquitoes but a glorious, crystal-clear pool and a waterfall splashing into it. We’d take off our clothes and swim, then I’d be standing under the waterfall and he’d suddenly creep up on me and pounce. He’d swing me round and kiss me just the way he did this morning and…
‘What appeals to you most?’ asked Marc, in a smoky, caressing voice.
Jane sat up with a jerk and stared at him in horror. Had he read her mind? Then she realised that the waitress had returned to remove their empty plates and was now proffering two dessert menus. The wild rose colour in her cheeks slowly subsided and she muttered something inaudible as she took the menu.
‘What appeals to you most?’ Marc repeated. ‘Cheesecake, brandy snaps or strawberries and cream?’
Jane choked.
‘No, not the strawberries,’ she said faintly. ‘Anything but that.’
Marc gave her a strange look but luckily did not question her.
They finished the rest of their meal in almost total silence and on the drive home he seemed preoccupied. Jane was relieved to have a chance to compose herself at last. After a while her turbulent feelings began to subside and she decided that she was probably just having a midlife crisis rather early. Hormonal imbalance, that was it. But she must stop it. Certainly Marc Le Rossignol was good-looking, ruthless, with a negligent arrogance that would probably inflame any red-blooded woman, but the mere fact that she had a primitive physical response to him did not mean that she was in love with him. And only love could excuse the irrational way that she was behaving. It was ridiculous, particularly since she scarcely knew anything about him. He might even be married or engaged already. This thought gave her such a jolt that she blurted out the question before she could stop herself.
Unwelcome Invader (Harlequin Treasury 1990's) Page 5